He walked in the sunshine; just as it was His estate of exaltation
already begun, when He could enter into Himself and see to the bottom of
His own heart, till He was able to say that it was His very meat and
drink to do His father's will, and to finish the work His Father had
given Him to do. The men of Capernaum went out after our Lord in their
boats because they had eaten of the multiplied loaves and hoped to do so
again. Zebedee's children had forsaken all and followed our Lord,
because they counted to sit the one on His right hand and the other on
His left hand in His soon-coming kingdom. The pain and the shame all
that cost our Lord, we can only remotely imagine. But as for Himself,
our Lord never once had to blush in secret at His own motives. He never
once had to hang down His head at the discovery of His own selfish aims
and by-ends. Happy man! The thought of what He should eat or what He
should drink or wherewithal He should be clothed never troubled His head.
The thought of success, as His poor-spirited disciples counted success,
the thought of honour and power and praise, never once rose in His heart.
All these things, and all things like them, had no attraction for Him;
they awoke nothing but indifference and contempt in him. But to please
His Father and to hear from time to time His Father's voice saying that
He was well pleased with His beloved Son,--that was better than life to
our Lord. To find out and follow every new day His Father's mind and
will, and to finish every night another part of His Father's appointed
work,--that was more than His necessary food to our Lord. The great
schoolmen, as they meditated on these deep matters, had a saying to the
effect that all created things take their true goodness or their true
evil from the end they aim at. And thus it was that our Lord, aiming
only at His Father's ends and never at His own, both manifested and
attained to a Divine goodness, just as the greedy crowds of Galilee and
the disputatious disciples, as long and as far as they made their belly
or their honour their end and aim, to that extent fell short of all true
goodness, all true satisfaction, and all true acceptance.

By-ends was so called because he was full of low, mean, selfish motives,
and of nothing else. All that this wretched creature did, he did with a
single eye to himself. The best things that he did became bad things in
his self-seeking hands. His very religion stank in th